a little update

What a wonderful weekend!  David & Jenn came down for a wedding, and so I got to meet, hold, cuddle and kiss my adorable new niece.  I am happy to say that I do at least have more hair than her now as you can see in the first picture.  My nephews are completely in love with her, and it is so cute to see them with her.

One of the things that I've done over the last few months is to take up crochet to keep my hands and mind busy.  It is really relaxing to me, and this picture shows my first finished project, her baby blanket.

I was thankful today for another thing that relaxes me, being able to exercise and specifically to be able to go swimming.   That has always been a good way for me to decompress, and I needed it today after getting my hospital bill from the last surgery.   I am still waiting for information on the appeal of my insurance denying coverage for the surgery, but at least the self-pay rate on the hospital bill shows that they will only charge me about 1/3rd of the original bill if the appeal is denied.  While still a lot of money, that is definitely better than what they originally billed the insurance for.   But back to the good stuff with swimming,....2-3 weeks ago when I got in the pool for the first time since August, I was only able to do 2 laps (quite disappointing, since I was swimming for 45-60 minutes at a time before the first surgery).  Today, I was able to do 24 laps.   My pool is not a full-size lap pool, and the laps were probably pretty slow by most people's standards.   Still, I'm still pretty happy with that amount of increase  in such a short time.  Now if the weather would just warm up enough at night so that I'm not shocking my whole system when I enter the pool, it would be great.   I've also been increasing my length of time walking so that the length of the 5k won't be a problem, but now I just need to work my speed up so people don't regret saying that they'll walk it with me.  I feel like I'm slowly getting myself back, and that is a wonderful thing!